Young cellist will take you on a classical ride during Elizabethtown show

The stars are out in Elizabethtown Friday night when Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Alisa Weilerstein play the music of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Stra­vinsky.

Gretna Music was fortunate enough to be offered the cellist Alisa Weilerstein as a substitute for another musician who had to cancel. This is like being offered a steak when the hot dogs are sold out. She’s performing with the renowned Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, an outstanding ensemble that plays often in New York and tours worldwide.

Weilerstein was one of four musicians who played at the White House last November. Her performance activities this season read like an encyclopedia of live music making in the classical world.

Not only is she accepting invitations to play with leading orchestras in America and Europe, she also plays chamber music with world-class collaborators, and perhaps more interestingly, with her parents, violinist Donald Weilerstein, one of the founding members of the Cleveland Quartet, and pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein. The Weilerstein Trio is the Trio-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

The concert is interesting because the works being performed rarely are heard in the area. Plus, there’s one blockbuster piece that will have you humming as you leave, one of those infectious melodies that takes residence in your head. Perhaps I’m speaking for myself in relation to Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme,” the work that features cellist Weilerstein as soloist.

Michael Murray, executive director of Gretna Music, said that Weilerstein has that “stellar combination of genuine talent and personality needed for her to be a leading proponent of her instrument for the next generation. She’s a viable successor to Yo-Yo Ma.”

Murray thought for a moment and said, “Even Yo-Yo Ma wasn’t Yo-Yo Ma at her age,” meaning this is a chance to hear “an artist that has around her that sense of discovery, that youthful vigor, that’s so exciting in music making.”

The other works on the program are Beethoven’s “Creatures of Prometheus” overture, a “Rondino” for winds, also by Beethoven, and the fabulous “Apollon Musagete” by Stravinsky, used by George Balanchine for some of his most breathtaking choreography. You can hear all about the music during Dick Strawser’s pre-concert classical conversation.

What about Orpheus Chamber Orchestra? Known widely as the world’s foremost chamber orchestra, Gretna Music’s artistic manager Carl Kane said it wanted the group for ages, and as luck would have it, Orpheus was scheduled to play the exact same program the night afterward at Carnegie Hall in New York.

This way, the ensemble gets to run through its program in the splendid acoustics of the Leffler Performance Center before its New York performance. The 34 musicians play in varying constellations, with one work requiring only nine players onstage and the Tchaikovsky needing the entire force.

Orpheus’ claim to fame is the fact that it plays without a conductor. There’s a collaborative process in all it does along the lines of a string quartet but involving many more instrumentalists.

Murray calls it a “different way of music making, an extension of our chamber music roots,” but the larger size of this ensemble brings its own excitement. “We’re not visited here much by moderately sized higher-caliber ensembles,” he said, and it’s a unique opportunity to see how Orpheus’ collaborative approach works and sounds.

Flutist coming

Looking to next week, I’m thrilled that flutist Claire Chase will finally be here, playing for Market Square Concerts. I first heard her when she was competing for the Concert Artists Guild International Award in New York in fall 2008. She won first prize, but I’d already decided that I loved her and her playing and would do what I could to bring her and the same accompanist, Jacob Greenberg, to our area. That goal comes to fruition Wednesday when they perform at Whitaker Center.

Ellen Hughes, director of Market Square Concerts, writes about her experiences and observations about fine arts, classical music and dance performances in the area. E-mail her at arts.ellenhughes@gmail.com.

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